Help Me Believe
Mar 25, 2026 | By Jessica Jang UT Austin ‘27
“Cause Lord I believe, help me believe
Lord, I can see, but I still can’t see clearly
Lord, I believe, would you help me believe
'Cause I want it so bad
'Cause I want it so bad
'Cause I want it so bad.”
“Help Me Believe”by Strahan Coleman is a song and a plea for God to reveal Himself and change the believer’s heart, and every time my playlist gets to this song, I am tempted to skip it. The New Zealand artist begins low and solemn with his guitar, and then the song escalates as he proclaims, in raw tenor, how he has “sought like a beggar in the world, just to find You, Lord.” Finally, in the second half of the song, he calls on God to help him believe, singing over and over that he wants it so bad.
Every time I get to the lyrics of the closing chorus, there remains a small part in me that feels dissonant, and the fervency of the exposed prayer is almost foreign on my tongue.
Do I “want it so bad?” Do I want Jesus so bad? And what does it mean to want it so bad?
Coleman sings of the experience of yearning, and I have come to view the season of Lent as a practice of that longing for Christ. For me, this season has become a time to focus on this longing and to confront my apathy by truly meaning it– with all my heart, mind, and strength– when I sing that I want Jesus.
When I was in 4th grade, I really wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder from Little House on the Prairie. I would daydream of calico, tall grass, and log cabins. Do I yearn for Christ as I yearned for the sparkling waters of Plum Creek or treacherous covered wagon journeys? This might be a silly example, but maybe part of having childlike faith is that simplicity of desire– the hoping, dreaming, and thinking of what you love. The young Christian adult is often tempted to get caught up in doing more, leading more, serving more, but Strahan’s song challenges us to yearn more for God. Let us return to the feeling of begging the Lord to know Him and His mercy, and let us move beyond a tepid attitude and into the deep waters of intimacy with the Savior. As Good Friday approaches, my prayer is that we yearn for Christ more, and that by setting our gaze on God more and more, He would allow us to experience the grief of His death and the joy of His resurrection in brighter colors and stronger power. Instead of skipping the lyrics that expose our passivity, we should press into the tension of turning our affections to Christ, to learn to “want it so bad.”